BnetDocs improvements

[Camel]

So, then, you would prefer to remain blissfully ignorant of its existance and any information you may have gained through it, just because he's not sharing every last thing?

Yes. My bot was connecting to battle.net before there ever was a bnetdocs. It's very possible to write a bot without bnetdocs -- it's more of a convenience factor to me at this point. Anybody who would give up on writing a bot simply because it's inconvenient would probably never make a good programmer.

See: Increasing number of 'CSB N00Bs'

[DarkMinion]

Was your bot connected to battle.net before Yobguls released his CheckRevision and DecodeCDKey functions?  

[Camel]

Was your bot connected to battle.net before Yobguls released his CheckRevision and DecodeCDKey functions?  

Yes...

[Arta]

c0ol, you're still not getting *my* point. I did create the site for the good of the community. We do not differ in our intentions, we differ in our methodology. I believe it's more helpful to give people a helping hand onto the ladder of self-discovery. If Battle.net's programmer community were simply that - a bunch of experienced programmers writing applications - then yes, making all information publicly available would probably be good. In my opinion, however, it's not. The Battle.net programming community is a collection of programmers & reverse engineers, people with an eye for analysis; 'hackers' in the truest sense of the word, and that kind of community does not *grow* from freely available information. It stagnates. This is already happening with stolen source and CSB newbs.

My intention was to get away from that. I wanted to create the kind of resource that would have helped me when i was starting. Having 100% of the information would have greatly enhanced my understanding of BNCS, and massively hindered my development as a programmer. Having enough information to inspire the desire to learn new skills allowing one to find the rest for onesself provides the best of both worlds. It creates real, thorough understanding. It just takes a little longer.

[DarkMinion]

Camel: I highly doubt you're being truthful.

[iago]

DM: I could have, since I didn't use those


I think cool's point is that more information is being given to Arta's "friend's" with Level 2 access than to other people with Level 1 access.  Although I disagree that there's anything wrong with that.

[Camel]

This is not an issue of having 100% of all information. The problem is Arta has some information that he is only willing to share with some people; this is completely seperate from the rest of BnetDocs -- the "public" part and the "private" part.

I remember once in one of my grade school classes I offered a good friend of mine a piece of gum I had and, to make a long story short, he was denied that piece of gum because I was not willing to give everybody in the class one. While at the time I may have thought it was silly, I realize now what she was doing: trying to make it more fair for everybody.

To me, c0ol's argument is exactly the same as my teacher's was: one should give information to everybody or keep it to one's self. As it is now, you are giving some information -- the "public" part -- to everybody; it's the rest of the site that is the unfair area.

Fortunately for Arta, the internet is a free enterprise: there are, for the sake of this argument, no authority figures that can step in and tell Arta he must share. Even if there were, it's unlikely that there are any laws that would covor this issue because it's one of morals and not of right and wrong.

[edit] Replaced "you" with "Arta" in the first paragraph for clarity.

[UserLoser]

I've only read a little of this, but...
*thinks BnetDocs fine the way it is*

[Adron]

For a long time, I've shared detailed information only with a few people. My general rule for deciding whether a certain person belongs to those people has been:

Would this person be able to find it out for himself with his current skill/abilities?

My reasoning is very similar to Arta's. I want to make sure people learn how to find information. When they know how to do it, I have no reason to make them spend more time than necessary finding it.

My general method for this has been to share the information I have with people who share their information with me. For simple peer-to-peer sharing, that works fine. Arta has taken sharing to a higher level, and that gives him much more of a headache determining who's got it, and who's in way over their head. Maybe when he makes some kind of contribution system it will be more obvious. I'm happy I don't have to make the decisions.

[Camel]

That is called trading.

[Adron]

It's kinda similar to trading. The difference is that I'm not trading equal value for equal value - people need not provide something that is of use to me at that time. Think of it as an investment from my side.

I'm trying to ensure that they have reached a skill level where they can understand all the information that I will share. What I'm hoping to accomplish is that people with enough skill to find useful information won't waste time finding things that I already figured out. People that don't have that skill yet need to practise finding information first.

What I'm hoping then is of course that they will share information back to me when they find it, from things that I haven't researched yet, and thus save me research time.

[warz]

Highlight the yellow smilie that has the eyes that get big and small. Doesn't that look funny? ( )

P.S.: Figure out WAR 3 stuff on your own. Chances are, once you do, and if you're not c0ol, you'll probably try to regulate who sees it also. A lot of people don't value the personal satisfaction gained from doing this kind of stuff on their own, partly because they haven't discovered anything of great importance and demand. They take what's given to them for granted. If you painted a prize winning picture, then shared with somebody else the technique, style, paint brush and coloring you used, then saw it replicated time and time again by people that don't credit you, it probably wouldn't feel like such an accomplishment anymore.

I dunno where I am going. If this is dumb, ignore it. If it makes sense, then hell yah. Personally, I don't mind sharing what I know and have, but I'm not going to try and sway peoples opinions.

[Grok]

Personally, I don't mind sharing what I know and have

Like some of my old addresses, phone #s, SSN, birth date, woooooooo.  

[TheMinistered]

Perhaps arta should give them instructions on how to find out the information, then if they input the right information/anser... from that point on the information is openly available to them?

[Adron]

Perhaps arta should give them instructions on how to find out the information, then if they input the right information/anser... from that point on the information is openly available to them?

I actually suggested something like that once, but it would've required a lot of manual intervention, and I'm pretty sure that in not too long there'd be a page listing "wut u gotta say 2 get axs 2 bnetdocs"...